#anne

Now she has power and passion and the struggle has significance for me-let the momentary consequences be what they may. Suppose that in her pride she becomes giddy, suppose that she does break with me-all right! -she has her freedom, but she will still belong to me. That the engagement should bind her is silly-I want to possess her only in her freedom ↗

— Søren Kierkegaard

#fiction #johannes #love #philosophy #seducer-s-diary

Nobody's truly free. Everyone is prisoner to a secret, a sin, a lie. It wasn't by accident that, in the Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could attain it. ↗

— J. Matthew Nespoli

#freedom #lies #secrets #sins #star-spangled-banner

Now Doon seemed to care for his new friends more than he did for her. Every time she thought about him she felt a thud of pain, like a bruised place inside her. ↗

— Jeanne DuPrau

#city-of-ember #friendship #jeanne-duprau #lef-out #loneliness

If I were a mannequin, I'd know people would only want me for my body. But that's OK, because that's how it is now. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#lust #mannequin #funny

The smaller the dinner table, the better the side conversation: you can gossip about the guests without fearing whether you will be overheard. It just isn't good table manners to exclude someone from their own ridicule. That's why the juiciest side conversations occur at a table for one. ↗

— Bauvard

#dinner #funny #gossip #humor #table-manners

The law and a thin veil of insincerity, all that prevents me from strangling an etiquette coach. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #law #manners #politeness

Charming villains have always had a decided social advantage over well-meaning people who chew with their mouths open. ↗

— Judith Martin

#humor #manners #humor

I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#humor #manners #philip-marlowe #put-downs #raymond-chandler

It's weird, how much he's noticed me... And apparently, I have not been as oblivious to him as I imagined, either. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#the-hunger-games #imagination

I've just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted. But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#imagination